Cisco Cisco Network Services Orchestrator components Data Sheet

 

 

© 2016 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. 

Page 1 of 4 

Data Sheet 

Cisco Network Services Orchestrator Enabled by 
Tail-f 

Product Overview 

Cisco

®

 Network Services Orchestrator (NSO) enabled by Tail-f

®

 is an industry-leading orchestration platform for 

hybrid networks. It provides comprehensive lifecycle service automation to enable you to design and deliver high-

quality services faster and more easily.  

The network is a foundation for revenue generation. Therefore, service providers must implement network 
orchestration to simplify the entire lifecycle management for services. For today’s virtualized networks, this means 

transparent orchestration that spans multiple domains in your network and includes network functions virtualization 

(NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) as well as your traditional physical network and all its components 

(Figure 1).  

Figure 1.    Cisco NSO Provides End-to-End Orchestration Across Multiple Domains  

 

Network Services Orchestrator helps service providers to achieve important business objectives: 

● 

Faster development and deployment of new revenue-generating services 

● 

Better quality of services, with fewer human errors and less repetitive manual work 

● 

Vendor independence 

The orchestrator provides a single networkwide interface for all network devices and services as well as a common 

modeling language and data store for both services and devices. 

Network Services Orchestrator supports the implementation of services on a wide variety of networking devices, 

including traditional hardware-based devices, virtual software appliances (NFV), and SDN controllers. To manage 

the virtual machine lifecycle, the orchestrator includes optional integration with the Cisco Elastic Services Controller 

(ESC), which deploys and manages virtual applications. The orchestrator can use other NFV managers as well. 

The service specifications are defined in semantic service models. Network Services Orchestrator can load these 

at run time. Examples include Layer 2 and Layer 3 VPNs, service chains, Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) peering, 

and access control lists (ACLs). The service manager provides full support for any service change, including 

arbitrary modifications in real time. The orchestrator renders the minimum configuration change for the devices to